Collage using magazine pages

Collage using easy to find, recycled materials such as pages from old magazines, is a fun and cheap activity. Kids can express themselves shaping portraits, landscapes, animals and much more. The fun is even bigger, if you suggest kids to use their hands to tear the pages apart. The result will be spontaneous and quite unexpected. The activity is safe even for small kids, that can not use scissors.

Materials & tools:

One or more white or plain colored paper to use then as base for the collage.

One or more magazines that you don't need anymore.

Glue stick.

1. Allow kids enough time, to search inside magazine pages for beautiful colored and patterned areas. Actually, let them understand that they should not be interested for ready-made figures, such as trees, faces and people, but they should look for patterned and colored areas inside and behind these figures. Afterall, this is the concept of the activity. To teach kids look behind the obvious and make them understand that they can transform any material into something completely different. For example, they might tear a patterned dress or some coloful shoes, in order to use the pieces as flowers or tree leaves. Or they might cut a blue sky to dress a figure.

2. The kid should tear the page apart and then try with his hands to cut the desired shape, such as a tree trunk, a boat, a people's face, a square, an animal, a butterfly and much more.

3. Using a glue stick help the kid glue the cut piece on a white or plain color paper. The kid can continue searching inside the magazines and tearing pages, to add more detail. For example, in a human figure, he can add hair, eyes, lips, body and cloth etc.

Everything, should be shaped with magazine hand-teared pages. It is better not to use scissors since the result will be quite different. After all, tearing paper is something that all kids can do and enjoy.

The ideas are endless. The kids can shape more human figures, flowers, trees, animals, and much more.